ECSST News article of the day WHAT DO YOU THINK MEMBERS? Any ideas? SHIP WILDLIFE OUT TO SEA TO SAVE IT FROM EXTINCTION Australia is in the grip of an extinction crisis. Our unique animals, plants and ecosystems are rapidly ebbing away in a process that began more than 200 years ago with European settlement. Feral cats and foxes are thought to be major culprits. So how do we stem the flood of extinctions? Predator-free offshore islands, previously seen as a last resort, could be a significant part of Australia’s conservation future. Other countries, such as New Zealand, can show us how it’s done. In 2014 Australia appointed its first Threatened Species Commissioner, Gregory Andrews. Andrews faces a huge challenge in saving Australia’s endangered animals and plants, but islands could be part of the solution. Mammals have been particularly hard hit by the extinction crisis, with around 10% of Australian species extinct and a further 20% under threat. Globally this accounts for almost a third of all recent mammal extinctions. There is increasing scientific consensus that cats and foxes are a powerful driver of these extinctions, amplified by land clearing and frequent, large-scale bushfires that degrade and fragment wildlife habitat. Island woes The impact of introduced predators is not surprising considering that Australia is an island continent whose wildlife has been isolated from the rest of the world for millions of years. A similar fate has befallen unique wildlife on other isolated islands, a notorious case being the impact of introduced predators on New Zealand’s birds: 13 are extinct and a further 24 are endangered, including kiwis and the kakapo, the world’s largest parrot. The conservation response has followed very different pathways in Australia and New Zealand, which is a world leader in the use of offshore islands and fenced sanctuaries to conserve species threatened by predators. It has well-developed policies and monitoring programmes for translocating endangered species by both government and non-government conservation programmes......………………………… READ FULL ARTICLE AT: universityworldnews/article.php?story=20150116093351815 If you like it, please share it? ECSST (Endangered Cat Species Survival Trust) Homepage: ecsst.org (in the process of updating with lots of information regarding endangered cat species in the wild and our entire project, our photographers, cat species etc.) Facebook: facebook/Endangeredcatspecies Twitter: https://twitter/ECSST777 Photographers group: facebook/groups/332219533550937/
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 10:11:00 +0000